Rule Five Chicago Machine Friday

A college kid in Illinois has learned a hard lesson about Chicago machine politics – you know, the ones that produced our last President. Excerpt:

The history of the little guy being squashed by massive Chicago political clout at election time is just too long to print without weeping.

But the story for today is so amazing that some Chicago election officials have never seen the like.

“No one can remember anything approaching this,” said an election official.

Really?

It’s overkill of epic proportions, like using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat, or firing off a nuclear weapon to kill a sparrow. A Southwest Side David vs. Goliath story.

The David is David Krupa, 19, a freshman at DePaul University who drives a forklift part time. He’s not a political powerhouse. He’s just a conservative Southwest Side teenager studying political science and economics who got it in his head to run for alderman in a race that pits him against the most powerful ward organization in Chicago.

The Goliath is the 13th Ward Democratic Organization run by House Speaker Michael J. Madigan, aka Boss Madigan, the most powerful politician in the state. Boss Madigan has long hand-picked his aldermen. He likes them loyal and quiet. The current silent alderman of the 13th Ward is Marty Quinn.

Boss Madigan wields a big stick:

To get on the ballot, Krupa was required to file 473 valid signatures of ward residents with the Chicago Board of Elections. Krupa filed 1,703 signatures.

But before he filed his signatures with the elections board, an amazing thing happened along the Chicago Way.

An organized crew of political workers — or maybe just civic-minded individuals who care about reform — went door to door with official legal papers. They asked residents to sign an affadavit revoking their signature on Krupa’s petition.

Here’s the onion:

The number of revocations far exceeds the number of signatures Krupa collected. That means false affidavits were filed with the elections board.

Why would thousands of people lie on a legal document of revocation, and say they’d signed Krupa’s petitions, when they didn’t sign Krupa’s petitions? Were they just being nice?

Because fraud, of course. Blatant, unrepentant, unapologetic, machine-politics fraud – the kind some folks like to claim never happens.

Now, there are felonies here – hundreds if not thousands – organized, aided and abetted Boss Madigan’s crew. (Note his party affiliation, which is hardly a surprise, this being Chicago.) So should we hold our breath waiting for prosecutions? No, because, in corrupt machine politics, some people are above the law.

This is another example of something I’ve been saying for some time; equal treatment under the law is effectively a dead letter in this nation now, and has been for some time.